Biscuits All-Star: Willy Adames
Each day leading up to the 2016 Southern League All-Star Game on Tuesday, June 21 at Trustmark Park in Pearl, MS we will highlight one of the seven Biscuits that made the game's roster. Today's Biscuit All-Star highlight is short stop Willy Adames.
Willy Adames was signed by the Detroit Tigers as an International Free Agent in July of 2012 at the age of 16 from the Dominican Republic. Willy quickly proved himself at a young age, getting ranked the Tigers #30 overall prospect after the 2013 season, when he was just 17 years old. After a solid start to the 2014 season in which Willy hit .269 with 6 HR's in 98 games for low-A West Michigan, he was a key component of the blockbuster three team trade that sent Adames, LHP Drew Smyly, and infielder Nick Franklin to the Rays, Cy Young Award Winner and former Biscuit David Price to the Tigers, and Austin Jackson to the Mariners at the trade deadline in 2014. After finishing the rest of the 2014 campaign in low-A Bowling Green for Tampa Bay, Willy was ranked the #1 overall prospect in the Rays system by Baseball America and MiLB Pipeline.
Heading into the 2016 campaign, Willy was once again ranked as a top prospect, earning the #3 overall prospect in the Rays system (#1 positional player) as he was promoted to the Biscuits to begin his AA career at the age of 20. After a slow start through the first couple of games of the 2016 season, Adames found his groove beginning on April 10th, where he proceeded to record multi-hit games for 4 out of the next 6 days and would continue punishing Southern League pitchers for the next 2 months. Throughout the season, the youngest player on the Biscuits roster has recorded 4 game winning hits in the 9th inning or later, including a walk-off, pinch hit HR on April 26th. His most impressive performance of the year may have been one of his most recent, when he went 4-5 with a HR, 3 runs scored, 4 RBI's, and a stolen base on June 9th in the Biscuits 17-2 drubbing of the Biloxi Shuckers.
Adames is currently 2nd in the Southern League Doubles (20), 3rd in Total Bases (115), and tied for 7th in HR's (8). His OPS of .886 is the also highest of any middle infielder in the Southern League. So far through half of the 2016 season, Adames is on pace to set personal career highs in batting average, slugging %, OPS, and perhaps most impressively fielding percentage, all while facing the most challenging opponents at the AA level.